


The City Was Silent

by alec



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Extinction, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-26
Updated: 2010-04-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 20:50:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6393322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alec/pseuds/alec
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <strong><span class="u">Prompt:</span> You hear a baby crying, but you know you are alone.</strong>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The City Was Silent

The city was silent. Or, more, what was left of the city. Tan and brown dust coated the hollow frames of the monolithic skyscrapers that once dominated the horizon. Skeletons of the houses, furniture still akin and overturned, dotted the narrow streets. Jagged edges of pavement met air, and ramps were borne of the hundreds of tiny alleyways.

But the people – Oh! The people! How did they splatter throughout the labyrinth of death and disease. Corpses, huddled together, morphed and fused into one unholy abomination, filling ditches, mouths wide in agony. Faint formes of the newly dead, the features still lifelike, as if in the presence of some wind, their mouths might once more move, to continue and finish the screams of the untold agonies that had momentarily ceased with their beating hearts. Some had wrapped themselves around others, hoping to appease some higher being, to give their life to save another. But there is no Higher Being. Not anymore. We took care of that long ago.

Death and destruction. No greens navigated the lands, no blues nor whites broke the crimson skies. The world was brown and black – returned to its old state.

How, in the destruction, could one know a loved one from an enemy. Everybody looked just as the others; the Blast had ensured that. In life, John Walther had thought himself to be the elite, the strength and core of the city. In death, all he had to pride himself on was his marrow was leaking from his bones, not his skull.

And silence.

Unholy, deathly. Silence.

The ground stirred. An aftershock ripped through the city, bringing down the standing statues, the hollow histories. And the dust cleared.

And there lay a single man, late in his twenties. As if by a hand of some Higher Authority, he had survived the blast. Frantic, the man stood up, and relived the scene the horrors of his final moments – of everyone’s final moments. And before he could even stabilize himself, he began to run. To the nearest body, he shook the figure, raising it from its perpetual slumber. And the head lolled to and fro, shaking off the binds of sleep. But the head had long since gone limp, and the man quickly moved along.

In silence, his screams pierced the airs. He called out, pleading for any like him who had survived, to come find him, to help him look for others. But not even the birds in the sky, had there been any at all, could hear him. He was all alone, the last left to fend out a meaningless existence.

By his life lived, he returned in the throes of panic, to where he had frequented most. The store at the corner of 5th and Main. The office floor, long since taken down in the Blast, now just a pile of dirt and rubble. His house, the roof caved in by a hundred indistinct figures. His girlfriend’s house, empty save a long slender figure he cared all too little to stare at.

In circles he ran. Frantic – he had to find someone. Surely he couldn’t be all alone. If he had survived, why not others?

And then he heard it. A woman’s call, hushing a crying baby. Just over the ridge. Frantic, he stumbled up the side, in his haste slipping twice and having to start over. When at last he mounted the summit, he looked – cried for the voice of the Heavenly female. But all his eyes fell upon was a figure, holding a tiny bundle between her arms.

Another cry – a deep voiced man, yelling at the buses, to move faster! He ran to the bus station, calling for the man, asking for a name, or even just a reply. But only the charred outline of a plump businessman met his eyes – the voice had moved on.

Children playing, their laughter an unholy mockery in this time. But still, the man was not alone. And he ran from room to room, store to store, playing games with the children, little more than wisps in the corner of his eyes.

  


The city was empty. The city was still. The lands were brown and black, save for the patch of land by a young man, in his late twenties. A pool of red formed slowly around his head, a halo bought with a bullet.

As if by some Higher Authority, he had survived the Blast. But there is no Higher Being. Not anymore. We took care of that long ago.

A million voices cried out in the silence. A thousand echoes littered the emptiness. And one set of eyes stared listlessly, forever, at the slowly churning crimson skies, and at the hollow frames of the monolithic skyscrapers that once dominated the horizon.


End file.
